09-18-2014, 11:57 PM
I know this has gotten heated but I want to share my views as a vegan since I'm not sure they've been covered adequately:
Firstly, I definitely struggle with the plight of eating plants, as they are indeed sentient, I have trouble even weeding my garden. However, I take comfort in the fact that plants have evolved so that when I eat them, when I am through with processing the vegetables in my body, I expel the seeds, and if I lived a more natural life, they'd have a new life cycle with their own fertilizer! The circle of life! Harvesting a fruit is more akin to an orgasm, as it facilitates propagation, similar to a flower giving up its nectar to a bee. How do we know that the smells and screams are those of pain and not of ecstasy?
As it is, supporting the meat industry supports MASSIVE scale death, as much of the crops grown for food are actually grown to feed the Billions of livestock that we kill and eat each year. I just read the statistic yesterday that energy conversion from corn-to-livestock-to-human is about 3%. 3%! That's a gratuitous 97% of energy converted from the sun by hardworking plants being spent because beef is tasty. Can you imagine if the food production output in the US increased 97%?? Would anyone ever be hungry? Not to mention the amount of agricultural land being spent on grazing animals (2/3s) being more creatively utilized...
So when one says that the suffering is ubiquitous and not optional, it seems like a bit of cognitive dissonance. There could be a lot less suffering. I could go into more details about the utter gore and pure psychological torture involved in the meat industry, but for some reason that rarely moves people. I think society is gradually moving to a more enlightened view of where their food comes from, persuading them to make better choices (local, organic), but food is such a big part of what's going on right now. I totally get it if part of many entities' motivating factors to return to 3D was getting to eat sushi and pizza. I'm totally a cog in the food industry machine so maybe part of this post is reflective of my own guilt at taking part in it. Either way, I pray daily for all of Earth to have better.
Peace, friends.
Firstly, I definitely struggle with the plight of eating plants, as they are indeed sentient, I have trouble even weeding my garden. However, I take comfort in the fact that plants have evolved so that when I eat them, when I am through with processing the vegetables in my body, I expel the seeds, and if I lived a more natural life, they'd have a new life cycle with their own fertilizer! The circle of life! Harvesting a fruit is more akin to an orgasm, as it facilitates propagation, similar to a flower giving up its nectar to a bee. How do we know that the smells and screams are those of pain and not of ecstasy?
As it is, supporting the meat industry supports MASSIVE scale death, as much of the crops grown for food are actually grown to feed the Billions of livestock that we kill and eat each year. I just read the statistic yesterday that energy conversion from corn-to-livestock-to-human is about 3%. 3%! That's a gratuitous 97% of energy converted from the sun by hardworking plants being spent because beef is tasty. Can you imagine if the food production output in the US increased 97%?? Would anyone ever be hungry? Not to mention the amount of agricultural land being spent on grazing animals (2/3s) being more creatively utilized...
So when one says that the suffering is ubiquitous and not optional, it seems like a bit of cognitive dissonance. There could be a lot less suffering. I could go into more details about the utter gore and pure psychological torture involved in the meat industry, but for some reason that rarely moves people. I think society is gradually moving to a more enlightened view of where their food comes from, persuading them to make better choices (local, organic), but food is such a big part of what's going on right now. I totally get it if part of many entities' motivating factors to return to 3D was getting to eat sushi and pizza. I'm totally a cog in the food industry machine so maybe part of this post is reflective of my own guilt at taking part in it. Either way, I pray daily for all of Earth to have better.
Peace, friends.
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